On the heels of the announcement of Megaupload's pending resurrection as Me.ga, Kim Dotcom has come up with a yet another way to promote himself, annoy the US and New Zealand governments, and rally public support in his battle to stop his extradition and end the copyright infringement case against him: he wants to give everyone in New Zealand free broadband service.

The core of the plan is to revive the failed Pacific Fibre, an effort to create a broadband link from Australia and New Zealand directly to the US by way of a submarine cable to Los Angeles. The effort went bankrupt in August before reaching its goal. Dotcom's plan is to complete the link, and to sell high-speed connections to government, businesses and foreign telecommunications companies—while giving New Zealand ISPs free access to provide connectivity for individual residents.

"For every foreign user downloading from NZ (paid)," Dotcom posted on Twitter, "a Kiwi can download from outside NZ (free). The key: Storing data foreign users want in NZ." Dotcom contends that the high-speed link would make New Zealand an attractive location for data centers; the country's current shortage of global connectivity makes it an "Internet backwater," he said.

"It seems kind of insane"

Still, industry watchers say that Dotcom's plan is not without merit, but he may not be the best person to pull it off, as the cable would need to connect to American soil.

“It seems kind of insane to me," Tim Stronge of TeleGeography, told Ars. "Obviously he’s not a favorite of the Department of Justice, and if the whole plan [moves forward], the FCC or the Department of Justice might be unhappy about it."

However, he pointed out that New Zealand, and more importantly Australia (by virtue of having a bigger population), are in great need of more bandwidth.

"We looked at the route awhile back and it makes sense economically," he added. "It’s one of the few routes in the world where i can say that. There’s really strong bandwidth growth from New Zealand and Australia, so we think a cable along that route would be profitable. The problem is that investors are really stingy with their money."

If Dotcom's plan goes forward, users would still have to pay Internet service providers for access under the plan. But with free and faster direct connections overseas, user fees could be reduced to as low as a fifth of the current cost for broadband, with much higher throughput and no data caps.

Completing the trans-Pacific fiber link would require another $400 million in funding. Dotcom says that he would provide some of the funding himself, and work with the founders of Pacific Fibre to raise additional capital. "Not hard to imagine how Investors would like Pacific Fibre if it could charge a single customer 20M per year," Dotcom tweeted.

Show me the money

But it's not clear where Dotcom himself would get money to make an investment. He suggested in an interview with the New Zealand Herald that he could raise some of the funds to relaunch the project through lawsuits against the entertainment industry and the US government over their "illegal destruction" of Megaupload.

Stronge added that even if Dotcom isn't successful, Ozzies and Kiwis shouldn't despair.

"I do think in the next five years there will be a new cable built on this route by someone—it will happen," he said. "It makes too much sense. but the question is which group of investors is going to be able to pull it off and when will it get built?"

46 Reader Comments

Surely I'm not the only one who grows a bit weary of his every move being considered a headline story here and elsewhere. He's doing everything he can to get attention, and Ars (and others) are all-too-happy to oblige.

I don't think he has a snowball's chance of getting "Hollywood" or the US government to give him any cash for any wrongs perceived or otherwise. Even if he is successful, how long do you think it would take him to collect? Three years? Five? TEN?

I consider myself a patriotic American. Oikophobes (and patriotic non-Americans) might consider me jingoistic even.When it comes to the repudiation of the U.S's shameful actions in this and other such cases in both domestic and international venues: GOOD. The only thing that makes capitalism ethical is the voluntary nature of interactions with corporate entities. Implicitly giving them the power of law (guns) corrupts government and the ideal of capitalism both.So I will hold my nose and cheer Dotcom.

Surely I'm not the only one who grows a bit weary of his every move being considered a headline story here and elsewhere. He's doing everything he can to get attention, and Ars (and others) are all-too-happy to oblige.

Can you blame him tough? The whole attack on him and his company is such a massive farce. Being in a public spotlight is his defence and weapon against what's happening. Public is his greatest ally, in my opinion.

You dont need really to read about him do you? This is internet so you should easily be able to read only what interests you.

Surely I'm not the only one who grows a bit weary of his every move being considered a headline story here and elsewhere. He's doing everything he can to get attention, and Ars (and others) are all-too-happy to oblige.

[Can you blame him tough? The whole attack on him and his company is such a massive farce. Being in a public spotlight is his defence and weapon against what's happening. Public is his greatest ally, in my opinion.

True to a point. But the recent publicity is around other ventures (none of which have materialized nor even have any timetables), and not around what was done/is being done to him related to megaupload.

Quote:

You dont need really to read about him do you? This is internet so you should easily be able to read only what interests you.

[/quote][/quote]True. But it is the Internet, which means I get to spout my opinion in appropriate venues

For the most part I do skip those stories, but it seems like they're popping up even more frequently here lately. As a customer of this site, certainly I've the right to voice my opinion on the matter. I like Ars because it often offers in-depth perspective on various subjects - not because it rehashes the same Kim Kardashia-- erm, Dotcom news as every other tech blog.

True. But it is the Internet, which means I get to spout my opinion in appropriate venues

Whatever helps you sleep at night. Just so long as you're aware that your best option is really to just not click the story if you don't care about it. All you're doing is adding comments and traffic to a story, thereby making more people interested in looking at it, which makes your actions entirely self-defeating. Congrats

I consider myself a patriotic American. Oikophobes (and patriotic non-Americans) might consider me jingoistic even.When it comes to the repudiation of the U.S's shameful actions in this and other such cases in both domestic and international venues: GOOD. The only thing that makes capitalism ethical is the voluntary nature of interactions with corporate entities. Implicitly giving them the power of law (guns) corrupts government and the ideal of capitalism both.So I will hold my nose and cheer Dotcom.

I love when people try and pass off their ethics as if they're absolute.

The only thing that can give the power of law is government itself. No matter how much lobbying happens it is still a problem with government when those laws or powers are granted.

Government is already corrupted when you give a non-governmental entity governmental favor. This is what we like to call cronyism.

So the idea that corporate entities with their government granted legal favor are corrupting government is pretty damn funny. Since it implies government wasn't already corrupt by granting them legal favor in the first place.

It isn't a problem with corporate entities it's a problem with government. It's like a child being blamed for their parents giving into their demands for more candy than the other siblings.

No idea how much of what you are saying will come to fruition but you being constantly in the news (and in a positive light) must be giving quite a few people a solid migraine

I agree and to bad for those who say they are sivk of him being in the News.I want to know what is going on with Kim !What is going on with Kim is what is going on with us and our Corrupt A-Hole government.I am glad that I am able to read and learn about the lies and the breaking of our own Laws just to screw KD & MU.USA Conducted an illegal investigation, they are illegal holding Servers with people's files, Charged KD illegally, ETC.Their lies and secrets are unfolding and keeping him in the News is very important.

Keep on Fighting Kim !!! Millions and Millions World-Wide are looking at you.And a big hello to MAFIAAFire as well !

Net in Australia is quite slow. The NBN will certainly help but still outside connections would be limited and chocked even more when everyone has very fast internet connections.A great pipeline to states would certainly help in this regards so I am hoping they manage to restart the project.

@DawnrazorIsn't it irrelevant tough? It is not really important whether he is a jerk, a con man or even whether even MU was actually breaking laws.The issue is how American government acts trying to prosecute him. How insane the raid was, how silly were the actions and how unconcerned they seem to be about the justice as it seems their biggest priority was to destroy a business without court, without any defence...And to send a message to everyone else: "We can destroy you and there is nothing you can do"

Therefore, yes, he is a victim in my eyes even tough I do believe he was alright with MU being used to break various copyrights. At this stage tough this is no longer important. It is not about comics, movies and music being on MU, it's about eradication of our rights by a foreign government.

For the most part I do skip those stories, but it seems like they're popping up even more frequently here lately. As a customer of this site, certainly I've the right to voice my opinion on the matter. I like Ars because it often offers in-depth perspective on various subjects - not because it rehashes the same Kim Kardashia-- erm, Dotcom news as every other tech blog.

I consider myself a patriotic American. Oikophobes (and patriotic non-Americans) might consider me jingoistic even.When it comes to the repudiation of the U.S's shameful actions in this and other such cases in both domestic and international venues: GOOD. The only thing that makes capitalism ethical is the voluntary nature of interactions with corporate entities. Implicitly giving them the power of law (guns) corrupts government and the ideal of capitalism both.So I will hold my nose and cheer Dotcom.

I love when people try and pass off their ethics as if they're absolute.

The only thing that can give the power of law is government itself. No matter how much lobbying happens it is still a problem with government when those laws or powers are granted.

Government is already corrupted when you give a non-governmental entity governmental favor. This is what we like to call cronyism.

So the idea that corporate entities with their government granted legal favor are corrupting government is pretty damn funny. Since it implies government wasn't already corrupt by granting them legal favor in the first place.

It isn't a problem with corporate entities it's a problem with government. It's like a child being blamed for their parents giving into their demands for more candy than the other siblings.

Oh, but I largely agree with you; I didn't say where the corruption came from, did I?Given the venal nature of humanity, especially government bureacracies, it was the government itself in creating the opaque MECHANISMS that make it so easy to grant corporate (in the general sense, big unions are just as fond of this) legal favor that introduced the corruption.

Net in Australia is quite slow. The NBN will certainly help but still outside connections would be limited and chocked even more when everyone has very fast internet connections.A great pipeline to states would certainly help in this regards so I am hoping they manage to restart the project.

@DawnrazorIsn't it irrelevant tough? It is not really important whether he is a jerk, a con man or even whether even MU was actually breaking laws.The issue is how American government acts trying to prosecute him. How insane the raid was, how silly were the actions and how unconcerned they seem to be about the justice as it seems their biggest priority was to destroy a business without court, without any defence...And to send a message to everyone else: "We can destroy you and there is nothing you can do"

Therefore, yes, he is a victim in my eyes even tough I do believe he was alright with MU being used to break various copyrights. At this stage tough this is no longer important. It is not about comics, movies and music being on MU, it's about eradication of our rights by a foreign government.

Right. Because we are unable to get over how the government handled the whole thing, we must paint him out to be some sort of free speech messiah and turn a complete blind eye to ANY of the risks of what he's doing. Hell, we'll poke holes in Obama and Romney, Apple and Google, Coke and Pepsi, but when it comes to Kim, there doesn't seem to be a downside, right?

It appears that those who are vocal about their immense distrust and distaste for Kim and his entire thought process are an extreme minority and will get consistently voted down by the Groupthink. You'd think Ars commenters at least would be intelligent enough to spot hidden moves and possible reasons to be suspicious.

We're so quick to jump to the conclusion that the FBI is lying to us, but when a conman who knew (seriously, stop being naive, he very much knew) how he was profiting and what service he was providing starts launching music services, a new "unhackable" filehost, and now wants to do a full blown internet service provider hits the news, we eat up and lick up his every word as though we're starved puppy dogs.

It's fucking pathetic; you don't have to agree with how the US is handling it or how copyright works or this and that, but the LEAST you people could do is to stop and wonder what his motives might actually be.,

Net in Australia is quite slow. The NBN will certainly help but still outside connections would be limited and chocked even more when everyone has very fast internet connections.A great pipeline to states would certainly help in this regards so I am hoping they manage to restart the project.

@DawnrazorIsn't it irrelevant tough? It is not really important whether he is a jerk, a con man or even whether even MU was actually breaking laws.The issue is how American government acts trying to prosecute him. How insane the raid was, how silly were the actions and how unconcerned they seem to be about the justice as it seems their biggest priority was to destroy a business without court, without any defence...And to send a message to everyone else: "We can destroy you and there is nothing you can do"

Therefore, yes, he is a victim in my eyes even tough I do believe he was alright with MU being used to break various copyrights. At this stage tough this is no longer important. It is not about comics, movies and music being on MU, it's about eradication of our rights by a foreign government.

It is relevant because given his past it takes a shitload of proof to get me to believe anything he says. I'm absolutely astounded at how many allegedly intelligent people are so quick to accept the words of somebody who spent years boasting about how many people he conned, ripped off and stole from.

Net in Australia is quite slow. The NBN will certainly help but still outside connections would be limited and chocked even more when everyone has very fast internet connections.A great pipeline to states would certainly help in this regards so I am hoping they manage to restart the project.

@DawnrazorIsn't it irrelevant tough? It is not really important whether he is a jerk, a con man or even whether even MU was actually breaking laws.The issue is how American government acts trying to prosecute him. How insane the raid was, how silly were the actions and how unconcerned they seem to be about the justice as it seems their biggest priority was to destroy a business without court, without any defence...And to send a message to everyone else: "We can destroy you and there is nothing you can do"

Therefore, yes, he is a victim in my eyes even tough I do believe he was alright with MU being used to break various copyrights. At this stage tough this is no longer important. It is not about comics, movies and music being on MU, it's about eradication of our rights by a foreign government.

It is relevant because given his past it takes a shitload of proof to get me to believe anything he says. I'm absolutely astounded at how many allegedly intelligent people are so quick to accept the words of somebody who spent years boasting about how many people he conned, ripped off and stole from.

By his own words he's untrustable, but you all want to believe him...

THIS THIS THIS.

I don't know where the internet's "question everything" policy went, but it seems to have skipped over all matters pertaining to Kim.

Net in Australia is quite slow. The NBN will certainly help but still outside connections would be limited and chocked even more when everyone has very fast internet connections.A great pipeline to states would certainly help in this regards so I am hoping they manage to restart the project.

@DawnrazorIsn't it irrelevant tough? It is not really important whether he is a jerk, a con man or even whether even MU was actually breaking laws.The issue is how American government acts trying to prosecute him. How insane the raid was, how silly were the actions and how unconcerned they seem to be about the justice as it seems their biggest priority was to destroy a business without court, without any defence...And to send a message to everyone else: "We can destroy you and there is nothing you can do"

Therefore, yes, he is a victim in my eyes even tough I do believe he was alright with MU being used to break various copyrights. At this stage tough this is no longer important. It is not about comics, movies and music being on MU, it's about eradication of our rights by a foreign government.

Right. Because we are unable to get over how the government handled the whole thing, we must paint him out to be some sort of free speech messiah and turn a complete blind eye to ANY of the risks of what he's doing. Hell, we'll poke holes in Obama and Romney, Apple and Google, Coke and Pepsi, but when it comes to Kim, there doesn't seem to be a downside, right?

It appears that those who are vocal about their immense distrust and distaste for Kim and his entire thought process are an extreme minority and will get consistently voted down by the Groupthink. You'd think Ars commenters at least would be intelligent enough to spot hidden moves and possible reasons to be suspicious.

We're so quick to jump to the conclusion that the FBI is lying to us, but when a conman who knew (seriously, stop being naive, he very much knew) how he was profiting and what service he was providing starts launching music services, a new "unhackable" filehost, and now wants to do a full blown internet service provider hits the news, we eat up and lick up his every word as though we're starved puppy dogs.

It's fucking pathetic; you don't have to agree with how the US is handling it or how copyright works or this and that, but the LEAST you people could do is to stop and wonder what his motives might actually be.,

Not handled mate. Handles. This is still ongoing.

And what is he Doing exactly? What evil is this his new idea? I see a big project like that being beneficial to NZ and to Australia. Is it not?

We know his motives. His motives is to get rich. Nothing wrong with that.

You seem so angry... is it personal to you? this whole Dotcom situation? Cause you say that we jump to conclusion so easily that FBI is lying to us yet you do the same jumping to the conclusion that KD is a criminal too. There was no trial... there won't be any trial... They succeeded in their goal in destroying MU. Don't you see how wrong that is? How wrong is to destroys one life and business on bogus charges?

Again:Kim Dotcom criminal activity is not relevant anymore. The issue is not whether MU was doing everything correctly and legally...The issue is how USA and NZ government treated him. Being a jerk and ex-criminal (who paid fully for his crimes btw) is not a valid reason to invalidate his rights and treat him like he was treated.That's why people side with him. Nobody really cares about legality of MU anymore. The only important issue is how USA is waging its war against internet and piracy.

Net in Australia is quite slow. The NBN will certainly help but still outside connections would be limited and chocked even more when everyone has very fast internet connections.A great pipeline to states would certainly help in this regards so I am hoping they manage to restart the project.

@DawnrazorIsn't it irrelevant tough? It is not really important whether he is a jerk, a con man or even whether even MU was actually breaking laws.The issue is how American government acts trying to prosecute him. How insane the raid was, how silly were the actions and how unconcerned they seem to be about the justice as it seems their biggest priority was to destroy a business without court, without any defence...And to send a message to everyone else: "We can destroy you and there is nothing you can do"

Therefore, yes, he is a victim in my eyes even tough I do believe he was alright with MU being used to break various copyrights. At this stage tough this is no longer important. It is not about comics, movies and music being on MU, it's about eradication of our rights by a foreign government.

Right. Because we are unable to get over how the government handled the whole thing, we must paint him out to be some sort of free speech messiah and turn a complete blind eye to ANY of the risks of what he's doing. Hell, we'll poke holes in Obama and Romney, Apple and Google, Coke and Pepsi, but when it comes to Kim, there doesn't seem to be a downside, right?

It appears that those who are vocal about their immense distrust and distaste for Kim and his entire thought process are an extreme minority and will get consistently voted down by the Groupthink. You'd think Ars commenters at least would be intelligent enough to spot hidden moves and possible reasons to be suspicious.

We're so quick to jump to the conclusion that the FBI is lying to us, but when a conman who knew (seriously, stop being naive, he very much knew) how he was profiting and what service he was providing starts launching music services, a new "unhackable" filehost, and now wants to do a full blown internet service provider hits the news, we eat up and lick up his every word as though we're starved puppy dogs.

It's fucking pathetic; you don't have to agree with how the US is handling it or how copyright works or this and that, but the LEAST you people could do is to stop and wonder what his motives might actually be.,

Not handled mate. Handles. This is still ongoing.

And what is he Doing exactly? What evil is this his new idea? I see a big project like that being beneficial to NZ and to Australia. Is it not?

We know his motives. His motives is to get rich. Nothing wrong with that.

You seem so angry... is it personal to you? this whole Dotcom situation? Cause you say that we jump to conclusion so easily that FBI is lying to us yet you do the same jumping to the conclusion that KD is a criminal too. There was no trial... there won't be any trial... They succeeded in their goal in destroying MU. Don't you see how wrong that is? How wrong is to destroys one life and business on bogus charges?

No, it's not personal, not in the slightest. It's just becoming startlingly more and more clear to me that you either refuse to look at the entire man behind it all or you're just too naive to see this as anything except "the little guy versus Goliath" (forget David).

His motives are not to "just get rich". He knew what was being uploaded to MegaUpload, he knew exactly where to look for them, they had their own internal search engine, and he was very much aware what he was paying those uploaders for (do you really think some of those filenames weren't dead giveaways to him?.

Explain to me this; why would ANY filehost reward its uploaders for the download count? What is the need? If the point is to share, then the sharing should be the intrinsic reward, right? Since it's all legal anyway?

You know exactly why. He had made sure there were extremely fast speeds that were very appealing to even free users and he made sure the "big" uploaders who upped tons of music and tv shows would get paid for huge numbers of downloads of the same file. I happen to know several people who have been paid more than $1500 at a time in rewards points (and that's before we get into the link-sharing affiliates)

You obviously have never been to the darker side of the internet where there exists all kinds of ways to make money that are not remotely legitimate. You still operate under the presumption that all filehosts are legitimate, yet many conveniently ignore the fact that the number one selling point of upgrading to the premium account is "faster download speed".

....why!??! Why would you use a file hosting service that had terribly slow download speeds to store your files? What is the point? Dropbox and Mediafire and Box don't offer prop accounts with faster downloading, and they're fantastic storage methods!

That my friend is why I think you're naive. Because you're either purposefully ignoring all these things or you're just too naive to realize that this is why cookie-cutter (as in, not well established) filehosting sites spring up and get shut down. The game is to get as many premium subscriptions as possible for the pirates to upload until they get hit with so many DMCAs that they realize they need to shut down, and then they start over again somewhere else.

Anyone who has ever downloaded even the tiniest bit of warez is smart enough to know this, why many of you don't seem to just boggles my mind.

The smug bastard knows exactly where the money is to be made, and whether or not you think piracy hurts the artist (which a lot of the time I'm not even sure about), you better make damn sure you know who he is and what he is good at, because that's the only concrete bit of information we know about him. All these epitaphs of what he plans on doing mean nothing without that.

So go on. Keep "believing" in him, support his "vengeance against those who unfairly screwed him". And when you're done doing that, just know he's laughing all the way to the bank as he cashes in the checks that he makes from illegally shared content.

True. But it is the Internet, which means I get to spout my opinion in appropriate venues

Whatever helps you sleep at night. Just so long as you're aware that your best option is really to just not click the story if you don't care about it. All you're doing is adding comments and traffic to a story, thereby making more people interested in looking at it, which makes your actions entirely self-defeating. Congrats

Not strictly true. If the majority of registered and interested Arsians agreed with me, my comment would have quickly jumped to the position of reader favorite - thus sending a message to the editors Since it didn't, I'm left to assume I'm in the minority. So I'll continue not reading most of the new dotcom stories coming in, having said my piece.

Net in Australia is quite slow. The NBN will certainly help but still outside connections would be limited and chocked even more when everyone has very fast internet connections.A great pipeline to states would certainly help in this regards so I am hoping they manage to restart the project.

@DawnrazorIsn't it irrelevant tough? It is not really important whether he is a jerk, a con man or even whether even MU was actually breaking laws.The issue is how American government acts trying to prosecute him. How insane the raid was, how silly were the actions and how unconcerned they seem to be about the justice as it seems their biggest priority was to destroy a business without court, without any defence...And to send a message to everyone else: "We can destroy you and there is nothing you can do"

Therefore, yes, he is a victim in my eyes even tough I do believe he was alright with MU being used to break various copyrights. At this stage tough this is no longer important. It is not about comics, movies and music being on MU, it's about eradication of our rights by a foreign government.

Right. Because we are unable to get over how the government handled the whole thing, we must paint him out to be some sort of free speech messiah and turn a complete blind eye to ANY of the risks of what he's doing. Hell, we'll poke holes in Obama and Romney, Apple and Google, Coke and Pepsi, but when it comes to Kim, there doesn't seem to be a downside, right?

It appears that those who are vocal about their immense distrust and distaste for Kim and his entire thought process are an extreme minority and will get consistently voted down by the Groupthink. You'd think Ars commenters at least would be intelligent enough to spot hidden moves and possible reasons to be suspicious.

We're so quick to jump to the conclusion that the FBI is lying to us, but when a conman who knew (seriously, stop being naive, he very much knew) how he was profiting and what service he was providing starts launching music services, a new "unhackable" filehost, and now wants to do a full blown internet service provider hits the news, we eat up and lick up his every word as though we're starved puppy dogs.

It's fucking pathetic; you don't have to agree with how the US is handling it or how copyright works or this and that, but the LEAST you people could do is to stop and wonder what his motives might actually be.,

Not handled mate. Handles. This is still ongoing.

And what is he Doing exactly? What evil is this his new idea? I see a big project like that being beneficial to NZ and to Australia. Is it not?

We know his motives. His motives is to get rich. Nothing wrong with that.

You seem so angry... is it personal to you? this whole Dotcom situation? Cause you say that we jump to conclusion so easily that FBI is lying to us yet you do the same jumping to the conclusion that KD is a criminal too. There was no trial... there won't be any trial... They succeeded in their goal in destroying MU. Don't you see how wrong that is? How wrong is to destroys one life and business on bogus charges?

No, it's not personal, not in the slightest. It's just becoming startlingly more and more clear to me that you either refuse to look at the entire man behind it all or you're just too naive to see this as anything except "the little guy versus Goliath" (forget David).

His motives are not to "just get rich". He knew what was being uploaded to MegaUpload, he knew exactly where to look for them, they had their own internal search engine, and he was very much aware what he was paying those uploaders for (do you really think some of those filenames weren't dead giveaways to him?.

Explain to me this; why would ANY filehost reward its uploaders for the download count? What is the need? If the point is to share, then the sharing should be the intrinsic reward, right? Since it's all legal anyway?

You know exactly why. He had made sure there were extremely fast speeds that were very appealing to even free users and he made sure the "big" uploaders who upped tons of music and tv shows would get paid for huge numbers of downloads of the same file. I happen to know several people who have been paid more than $1500 at a time in rewards points (and that's before we get into the link-sharing affiliates)

You obviously have never been to the darker side of the internet where there exists all kinds of ways to make money that are not remotely legitimate. You still operate under the presumption that all filehosts are legitimate, yet many conveniently ignore the fact that the number one selling point of upgrading to the premium account is "faster download speed".

....why!??! Why would you use a file hosting service that had terribly slow download speeds to store your files? What is the point? Dropbox and Mediafire and Box don't offer prop accounts with faster downloading, and they're fantastic storage methods!

That my friend is why I think you're naive. Because you're either purposefully ignoring all these things or you're just too naive to realize that this is why cookie-cutter (as in, not well established) filehosting sites spring up and get shut down. The game is to get as many premium subscriptions as possible for the pirates to upload until they get hit with so many DMCAs that they realize they need to shut down, and then they start over again somewhere else.

Anyone who has ever downloaded even the tiniest bit of warez is smart enough to know this, why many of you don't seem to just boggles my mind.

The smug bastard knows exactly where the money is to be made, and whether or not you think piracy hurts the artist (which a lot of the time I'm not even sure about), you better make damn sure you know who he is and what he is good at, because that's the only concrete bit of information we know about him. All these epitaphs of what he plans on doing mean nothing without that.

So go on. Keep "believing" in him, support his "vengeance against those who unfairly screwed him". And when you're done doing that, just know he's laughing all the way to the bank as he cashes in the checks that he makes from illegally shared content.

Sounds to me like you're saying it's ok to rape a prostitute because prostitution is illegal, so the prostitute must be a criminal and deserves everything that happens to her. Not a line of thinking I'd be proud of.

Sounds to me like you're saying it's ok to rape a prostitute because prostitution is illegal, so the prostitute must be a criminal and deserves everything that happens to her. Not a line of thinking I'd be proud of.

..what the actual flipping fuck??

How...the HELL...did you arrive at that conclusion? If there was a such thing as Non sequitur Strawman Award, you'd be the proud owner of it for sure right now...

Since it was rocket science to you, no, what I'm saying is I don't trust Kim because of what he did before, and that statement is still valid regardless of whether or not you take into consideration that the US rained down upon him. But it's cool that you tried to reduce my comment into something completely unrelated with your appeal-to-humanity analogy, that must be easier for you.

If you can point out to me in any of my post which you quoted where I said even the slightest sliver of opinion concerning the whole "seizure" debacle (yes, I'm very much against what happened to him, but that's completely irrelevant), that would be appreciated.

So go on. Keep "believing" in him, support his "vengeance against those who unfairly screwed him". And when you're done doing that, just know he's laughing all the way to the bank as he cashes in the checks that he makes from illegally shared content.

Again...

Am I not clear enough or what?

It is irrelevant. It is not important what kind of crimes he committed. It is not important even if USA/movies and music industries accusations are 100% true.Again: This is not relevant anymore because of how USA handled the situation. How something which should be civil matter was handled with machine guns two choppers half a dozen squad cars. How innocent people are being hurt by actions of the government. How everything is delayed just to make him bleed money. How American prosecution cheat, steal and seemly do whatever they please without care in the world.Am I not clear with that? His past crimes, whatever MU might be guilty. It is now irrelevant. It is not not about trusting KD, about liking him, believing him. It is support for a victim of USA war against internet and piracy.

So go on. Keep "believing" in him, support his "vengeance against those who unfairly screwed him". And when you're done doing that, just know he's laughing all the way to the bank as he cashes in the checks that he makes from illegally shared content.

Again...

Am I not clear enough or what?

It is irrelevant. It is not important what kind of crimes he committed. It is not important even if USA/movies and music industries accusations are 100% true.Again: This is not relevant anymore because of how USA handled the situation. How something which should be civil matter was handled with machine guns two choppers half a dozen squad cars. How innocent people are being hurt by actions of the government. How everything is delayed just to make him bleed money. How American prosecution cheat, steal and seemly do whatever they please without care in the world.Am I not clear with that? His past crimes, whatever MU might be guilty. It is now irrelevant. It is not not about trusting KD, about liking him, believing him. It is support for a victim of USA war against internet and piracy.

It's not relevant that he's a proven and admitted liar and may well be lying now? You're just going to believe he's the victim because he says so. Hell he could well be making up shit about what the government did to him, it would certainly be in his nature to do so.

But that doesn't matter, it feeds your paranoid hatred of government, so it must be true.

I watched Robin Hood (the Disney version from the 70's) last night for the first time in maybe 20 years. It'd be an understatement to say I watched that movie a lot when I was a kid. I now realize how much of my life philosophy was influenced by that movie. Other people may look up to Batman or Spiderman or whatever, but I have Robin Hood.

Robin is cool because he practices a life of self-denial. He's the most charismatic guy in Nottingham and instead of exploiting that for his own gain, he gets his kicks by contributing to the community. The greatest thief in the land doesn't even own a home, that's a fucking hero. Kim Dotcom is not a hero. He disgusts me. Living in his mansion, with his trophy wife and his sports cars and his private McDonald's or whatever commercial kitchen that's necessary to feed his gaping maw. Where is the self sacrifice? All I see is greed. This latest stunt, where he says he's going to give free broadband to New Zeleand, I don't buy it for a second. It sounds nice, but it's just a fantasy, there's nothing to back it up.

All that said, I'm don't want Kim in jail. That will just fuel his perception of himself as the underdog. Just sell all his shit, give the money to charity, and never write another article about him again.

Hey if the man wants to ingratiate himself with the NZ public by fixing up our crappy internet, that's totally a ok with me, and most NZ'ers I suspect.

@ liquidsolstice, don't be so frigging arrogant. Pretty much everyone here knows he's shady as fuck, that's just not really relevant anymore. And, yes, his actions are important because they will influence how the imperial government acts in the future.

Your article states: “The [Pacific Fibre] effort went bankrupt”. My recollection is of reporting at the time saying that they failed to raise the additional capital needed - a different thing. (Bankruptcy is when you can't pay debts.) I'm happy to stand corrected, but either way wouldn't it be more prudent to edit it to a more general statement unless you are absolutely certain they specifically went bankrupt - ?

True. But it is the Internet, which means I get to spout my opinion in appropriate venues

Yet you whine about it and ask (in a subtle, indirect manner) that they "not so happily oblige <snip>idiots</snip> and report about them". Isn't that the very essence of censure? Censoring things that YOU don't like.

Quick minor point: We (kiwis) wouldn't get *free* internet, just much cheaper internet plans (I pay $60 a month for a 60GB cap, and that's a good deal here. We'd expect that to drop right down to $10-20 or so, and probably with a higher cap). There would still be ISPs etc, and they would still compete with each other.

The issue is how American government acts trying to prosecute him. How insane the raid was, how silly were the actions and how unconcerned they seem to be about the justice as it seems their biggest priority was to destroy a business without court, without any defence...

Right. Because we are unable to get over how the government handled the whole thing, we must paint him out to be some sort of free speech messiah and turn a complete blind eye to ANY of the risks of what he's doing.

I'm actually a little more concerned at how quickly so many people can "get over how [their] government handled the whole thing", and instead be all up in arms over the flamboyant behaviour of a single foreign national.

I mean seriously, what has a larger impact on your life? The unethical behaviour of a wealthy fat Kiwi, or the unethical behaviour of the government you live under.

You seem so angry... is it personal to you? this whole Dotcom situation?

No, it's not personal, not in the slightest. It's just becoming startlingly more and more clear to me that you either refuse to look at the entire man behind it all or you're just too naive to see this as anything except "the little guy versus Goliath" (forget David).

If it's not personal, then chill the fuck out. Take a deep breath, and realise that this saga has bigger implications for you than what Kim gets up to.

And in all honesty, it's hard to "look at the entire man" all at once. I guess that's what the US used it's black helicopters for.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.